Diner’s Journal went out to try it, sacrificing its Monday morning good mood in the service of the reader.

The sandwich contains no bread save the breading on the chicken, which is fried and comes in two bread-like slabs. Between these a KFC worker places a slice of white American-style cheese, a piece of crisp-fried bacon, and a splat of “Colonel’s sauce,” a kind of mayonnaise. The sandwich, KFC says in its advertising materials, “is so meaty, there’s no room for a bun.”

Stunt food has been a part of restaurant life probably since the first time a chef put a napkin over a customer’s head in order to serve him a whole, rare, roasted ortolan. There have been deep-fried candy bars, and General Tso’s chicken heroes. There have been steaks so large that they’re free if you can finish them. Some of these are redeemable in both their excess and flavor.

The “Double Down,” however, arrives at a new low: a greasy entree dish of chicken with bacon and cheese on it, slathered in sauce, that the company asks customers to eat with their hands. The chicken is watery within its soft casing of “crust,” the cheese familiar to anyone who has eaten food prepared by the United States government, the bacon chemical in its smokiness, the mayonnaise sauce tangy, salty, and sweet, all at once.

At the KFC on Broadway and 33rd Street on Monday morning, dour, slow-moving workers were selling the sandwich beneath fluorescent lights for $5.49. There was no sign for that option on the placard above the cash registers, however. The only “Double Down” on the menu was part of a combination deal selling for $7.99: the sandwich, a small order of fries, and a medium cup of iced Pepsi. At 11:45 a.m., there was a line of 7 people. All in it ordered the combination special.

The fries weren’t bad: steak-fry shaped numbers with a lot of salt on them. The Pepsi was, as Pepsi is, more sweet than Coke, more syrupy. And there was the chicken product, consumed on a seat on Broadway just north of Greeley Square, as geek paparazzi lurked anonymously in the bushes to watch and document the tasting: a slimy and unnaturally moist thing, with flavor ginned up in a lab.